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WinstonChurchill

Purely by coincidence I happened to be looking for info on this company today as well. I had one of their pianos about 20 years ago which I bought for $10 and which unsurprisingly (given the price) immediately fell to pieces. This page has some very brief history and some useful information on seria...

WinstonChurchill

At least he has good taste in hockey teams!

WinstonChurchill

Is there an echo in here?!

WinstonChurchill

Openwood, were you aware that you can buy a replica of the chair? http://www.glenngould-chair.com/ A bargain at twice the price? Well, a little more than I can bring myself to pay....yet. Also, for any Gould fanatics reading this who haven't officially joined the movement, allow me to invite you to ...

WinstonChurchill

Thanks all. It is in fact a U3, which apparently weighs 517lbs. As 3 fat blokes sitting on a sofa will weigh more than that, sofa castor cups will be fine. Good point. What I was thinking though was that the surface area on a sofa leg tends to be a fair bit larger than that of a piano castor, so sho...

WinstonChurchill

They are of course wrong, as I am about to demonstrate. However: My piano is about to be relocated from a carpeted room into a room with hardwood flooring. Can anyone suggest a good way to avoid putting dents in the floor once the piano is in situ ? I assume that those crappy little cup things you g...

WinstonChurchill

With the same budget as you I bought a second-hand Yamaha U3, which I've been exceedingly pleased with....

WinstonChurchill

No, I don't think the sound is the only thing that matters. What about aesthetics? What about craftsmanship? I personally would never want to play (let alone own) some plastic monstrosity, no matter how good it sounds. Why buy an expensive watch with a mechanical mechanism when a $4 quartz will tell...

WinstonChurchill

'Glen' Gould? Well, he did spell it that way sometimes, to be fair...

This sounds like a question for the Glenn Gould mailing list:

http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~mwatts/glenn/fminor.html

WinstonChurchill

Gotta say I've never had a problem with a little extra damp, but dry heat's a killer. Go for the outside wall. Just leave a bit of a gap between the piano and the wall. Then again, the radiators you have here in the UK are much gentler than the furnace setup we have back home, so as long as we're no...

WinstonChurchill

You haven't actually said where you're located, but presumably you're in the UK. If not, be aware that every country has different grading systems (or none at all), so 'grade 5' can mean a lot of things. Wherever you are, your local authority for music exams probably publishes a syllabus, and it's p...

WinstonChurchill

archivist wrote:Shall I swap digital for accoustic??

Yes.

WinstonChurchill

Interesting that all you Brits prefer the German Steinways. Back home in Canada I only ever heard the reverse!

WinstonChurchill

Memorizing music isn't like memorizing poetry; it's a hard slog at first, but once you've done the work, you'll no longer need to concentrate on every little detail. Your fingers will learn where they need to be and when, leaving your brain free to concentrate on dynamics and phrasing and all that g...

WinstonChurchill

Thanks guys -- very interesting. The image below shows what I think is the serial number. This matches the number that's stamped into various of the piano's removable bits. http://www.geocities.com/southendzine/DSC_0048.JPG This image shows the area to the left of the action, which doesn't seem to h...

WinstonChurchill

Hi Bill,

My mum's curious about the age of her Henry Herbert upright, serial number 2733. The fall board reads:

Henry Herbert
-- Toronto --
From The Mason & Risch Piano Co. L'td. Toronto

And thoughts? Cheers...

WinstonChurchill

Well, Barrie, I do what I can...

WinstonChurchill

Hold on a second -- are you assuming that because the piano is in a showroom that's been around for a while, a guarantee is inevitable? Let me disabuse you of that notion straight away! Get something on paper, or you're in very dangerous territory. Secondly, what do you hope to prove by taking your ...

WinstonChurchill

Do you suppose he's still looking, four years on???

WinstonChurchill

I'd never heard about this 'European sound' till I came to the UK. Some guy in a piano shop tried to sell me on this idea, but it sounded like sales spin on an inferior piano (this was a Reid Sohn -- there's something intrinsically embarrassing, not to say dishonest, about a German name on an Asian ...

WinstonChurchill

My advice on playing by ear would be: don't! It's worth spending the time now to learn how to read music, otherwise you're artificially limiting your progression at the piano for no good reason at all, and before you've even begun. In any case, playing by ear is a lot easier once you have some under...

WinstonChurchill

Ah, right you are. Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto. This website -- http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/ ... RTU0003055 -- makes it sound as though the piano was acquired for performances, and not just for decoration! I wonder if that's the case.

WinstonChurchill

Yeah, I'm pretty impressed with that answer too! Now here's what I'd really like to know (..if fumbler has a little more spare time!): where are they now? The one in the National Library I have played (however briefly and furtively!); the one in Rideau Hall I have seen -- the one from his St Claire ...

WinstonChurchill

Hmm, I'd be interested to know the answer to this as well. Maybe some other catalogue number that Steinway uses for the pianos they make available to their artists? On the other hand, if it's the serial number you're after, I'd suggest a nonchalant stroll through the National Library of Canada's lob...

WinstonChurchill

Well I'll be damned -- the boys from G&R even made it onto "Have I Got News for You" this evening. That must be their 15 minutes of infamy pretty well exhausted, then.

WinstonChurchill

Ah, that'll be lot No. 78 from the infamous auction last week, I take it! This is the same company that delivered my piano -- the dealer's choice, incidentally. The guys who actually did the work were excellent (I'm told; I wasn't home), but the company was useless. My fault for not realising the de...

WinstonChurchill

This site is handy for quick reference to some common chords: http://keychord.com/. You're far better off with a proper theoretical grounding long-term, of course.

WinstonChurchill

....less all of their overheads, of course.

WinstonChurchill

Is 85 not the tail end of the CBS years? Thought I heard that those were years best avoided...?

WinstonChurchill

'Cadence' is the term Bach used in the Clavier-Büchlein vor Wilhelm Friedemann Bach , which is where I picked it up at about 14...and I've been using it ever since. You're right that 'turn' is the usual term, though; hence my comment about 'cadences of the harmonic variety'. Incidentally, this site ...

WinstonChurchill

Almost. What you've said about bar 20 looks fine, but in bar 21 the sequence of notes will be Eb -- F -- [and then the cadence on the off-beat] -- G--F--E NATURAL--F and then to the Ab. From the F onward you're aiming to build up to the G in the next bar. This is one of those areas you could really ...

WinstonChurchill

That squiggly thing's an ornament known as a 'cadence' or sometimes a 'turn'. Search for either of these terms on the internet and you should get plenty of guidance...not to be confused with cadences of the harmonic variety of course. Basically, you're going to play notes 'around' the one in the sco...

WinstonChurchill

I can start you off from a personal point of vew, but I'm sure some of the tuners & technicians on the forum can give you some more specific advice. Tone is a very subjective thing. What do your favourite recordings sound like? Listen to the various instruments the professionals play and decide ...

WinstonChurchill

"To drop one piano, Mr Gould, may be regarded as a misfortune; to drop both looks like carelessness."

WinstonChurchill

That looks like a great set. I'd love to get my hands on disc 3.... if only it didn't mean buying discs 1 and 2 again...

Now I shall go away and let someone actually answer your question.

WinstonChurchill

Not in answer to your question, but: Pretty sure Glenn's first recording of the Goldbergs was on a Steinway regulated pretty much as per normal practice -- he always liked a light touch, but his 'harpsipiano' recordings (as he called them) didn't come until later. I believe the two- and three-part i...

WinstonChurchill

Oh yeah, that's what I mean -- I'm surprised that they're better from the off....but I'm willing to take your word for it!

WinstonChurchill

Well, yes, in fact...but I do think generalisations of all types are best avoided, despite that I see your argument for generalisation in a forum like this. I must say I'm surprised by your comment about soundboards improving, as I had understood kiln-drying of lumber generally to have become more p...

WinstonChurchill

PianoGuy -- I'm interested in what you've had to say about U3s and U1s and the pros and cons of both, in this and in other threads, but I'd like to know what specifically you have against older models, other than that they'll potentially have more mileage than newer ones (and there's no guarantee of...

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Search found 39 matches

Re: Hoelling & Spangenberg

Chair

They say there are no stupid questions.

Re: Shall I swap digital for accoustic??

Henry Herbert upright

Re: Older U3s...

Older U3s...